Fall Site Visit Teams Off Soon to Myanmar and Oaxaca

 Departure dates are fast approaching for both the Asia Pod and the Latin America Pods 2016 site visit teams. 

The Latin America site visit team is planning their week-long Oaxaca visit, (in southern Mexico) departing October 16. The six person group includes Betsy Hale, Patti Kilpatrick, Susan Sola, (all three fluent Spanish speakers), Teri Akin, Janet Pearson and her daughter Anne Sivley. They will be visiting partners Flor y Canto, and GESMujer. Patti, who is the GESMujer liaison, says she is particularly excited that the Pangea visit will coincide with the first graduating class of young women who have gone through GESMujer’s Joven (“Youth”) project involving women’s rights and reproductive health courses, funded by Pangea. The group will also meet with a potential grantee and other contacts who are aware of the issues and complexities facing the area’s indigenous peoples, including the 10th annual teachers strike that is currently taking place in Oaxaca. The LA Pod expects to put together another site visit sometime next year to their Guatemala partners.

Meanwhile, six  members of the SE Asia Pod are planning to head off on October 28 for two weeks of rugged travel in the mountainous northern region of Myanmar. Walt Adam, Susan Mackey, Fred Mohr, Paul Silver and Kim Rakow Bernier will be visiting partners Meikswe Myanmar and the Chin Women’s Empowerment Group, as well as meeting potential grantees and others who can help Pangea understand the rapidly evolving social and  political contexts of this vast country. Check out this recently published article by Pangea member, Janelle Choi who worked for 7 years in Eastern Myanmar, which makes the case for, “relational and transformational”, vs. “transactional” grantmaking.

Due to the length of the trip and transportation challenges, they have planned a separate visit to Cambodian partners, next February.

The value of site visits for Pangea’s work can’t be overstated. Not only does it provide insight and understanding of the communities our partners live and work in and allow for due diligence of organizations we support, it provides an opportunity for real relationship building with our partners and a view of life in other parts of the world that is closer to the ground than you will likely encounter in any other travels you may take. It is a core value and a real benefit of Pangea membership.

Both site visit teams will share their findings in a presentation in early 2017, which will be open to the entire Pangea community. Stay tuned…

 

“Pangea Giving support to our two current grantees in southern Mexico, Flor y Canto and GES Mujer, has enabled these grass-roots non-profits to educate two specific groups of indigenous people in Oaxaca state:  poor farmers and young women.  With Pangea support, Flor y Canto has held community meetings with campesinos over the last five and a half years to educate them on the legal methods by which they can protect their agricultural water rights — rights previously unknown to them. The GES Mujer Joven (youth) project, by the end of its second year, will have educated over two hundred 15-29 year old indigenous women from small communities on reproductive and legal rights, about which they previously had no idea. This is vitally important to each groups’ well-being because these indigenous people now see options to resignation, to sometimes deaf government ears, and to adolescent pregnancy and suffering spousal violence.”

~ Patti Kilpatrick, Latin America pod chair